Tornadoes

Spring in Middle TN seems to equal tornado season.  None of us grew up around tornadoes and none of us like them or even entertain any kind of comfort level with them.  Give me a hurricane ANY day of the week and I'll be fine.  This is our second weekend in a row that we are dealing with tornado watches and warnings (the more intense of the 2).  Last weekend the bad weather caused a theatre practice to be cancelled due to concerns of driving in the weather to drop off & pick up the kids as well as having the kids at practice if anything were to crop up.  Well, Morgan had 2.5 hours of extra dance practice this morning and then 2 hours of theatre practice this afternoon.  All during severe thunderstorms warning & tornado watch.  We are also under flash flood warnings until Monday.  We have areas that have had 10-13" of rain in a short amount of time.  We have side roads, major roads and interstates closed due to flooding.  There are parts of the interstate system that have floating buildings travelling down them as well as semi-trucks under water and cars completely under water & floating around.  It is insane.  And yet you will still find people trying to get out and drive.   Tonight we had a tornado warning for our county and a specific "get to your safe place now" warning for our area.  The storm system that caused this warning had rotation going on and was moving up the main road that is 1-2 blocks from our house.  A funnel cloud was spotted by a trained storm spotter in our area.  This storm system basically marched right over us.  Thankfully, nothing touched down.  So funnel cloud or no funnel cloud all was well. 

We are expecting more of this through the night and all day Sunday and into Monday morning.  Not fun! I'm trying to take it all in stride...being smart & safe without being overly cautious or freaked out.  Morgan is doing alright with it.  She doesn't like it but she went to the safe spot, took a book & a booklight and seemed okay.  Alex is wound up as tight as can be.  He doesn't like any of this. The continous coverage makes him worse but we HAVE to be aware of what is going on so we can all be safe.  We try to keep the coverage muted w/an adult watching for our area to come up on the screen and keeping him busy doing other stuff.  He did good throughout the day but tonight when we had to go to the safe spot (under the stairs through our bathroom closet) he was quite stressed out.  Poor little guy.  He got lots of hugs & reassurances. 

I love rain and thunderstorms but NOT like this.  We have neighbors that have yards under water, friends around the area that are completely flooded in their homes or neighborhoods.  Not a good May Day / Beltane weekend for sure.